When I asked him to talk to me about why he decided to finally became a director at Yahoo after what was a very long mulling that started even before former Google exec Marissa Mayer became CEO, Max Levchin alerted me earlier today to a very solid post he did on the subject on his blog, which is called “too long to tweet.”

I now remember why I really like that Max Levchin: He blogs! (Also because he is an unapologetic coffee snob.)

In his essay, he breaks down the reasons into three parts: Personal, business and sentimental.

Noting his longtime admiration of Mayer, he noted “her decision to take the top role at Yahoo! was a very ballsy move, and when she asked for my help, I was excited about working with her.” Levchin, a well-known tech entrepreneur, also wrote that he hoped for a strong Yahoo, since it was a “massive net-positive for the Silicon Valley ecosystem, the market in general, and the US economy.”

Most of all, he said, Yahoo “showed me that computer geeks can start companies that create that future. I’d love to do my part in helping the company that inspired me.”

Levchin also emailed me to add: “If she gets the place into shape, it will be the absolute greatest turnaround in Valley’s recent history, possibly ever.”

Indeed.

Sources close to the situation told me that Mayer convinced Levchin to join the board by convincing him that he’d be able to help her inject entrepreneurial vigor into the company.

That would be good, and Levchin’s post is actually one of the best recitations of the kind of spirit Yahoo needs to revive itself that I have read in a long while.

It also tracks exactly on many conversations I have had with Levchin in the past about Yahoo’s troubles. He has long been intrigued by the opportunity despite management woes, innovation doldrums and the relentless talent exodus.

But judge for yourself — here’s the whole thing:

As announced by Yahoo! this morning, I have been asked and agreed to join its Board of Directors. It is an honor to be asked, in and of itself. There are three key reasons I accepted:

Personal: I’ve long respected Marissa’s talent and tenacity. Her decision to take the top role at Yahoo! was a very ballsy move, and when she asked for my help, I was excited about working with her.

Business: a stronger, fast-growing Yahoo!, with its tremendous resources is a massive net-positive for the Silicon Valley ecosystem, the market in general, and the US economy.

Sentimental: Yahoo! was one of the first true giants created by this amazing new thing, the Web. Before Google or Facebook, before almost everything there was Jerry’s Guide, right up there with What’s New page in Mosaic. Through amazing luck, I was a Computer Science freshman at UIUC in ’93, which gave me a glimpse into the fantastic future we are now living. Yahoo! showed me that computer geeks can start companies that create that future. I’d love to do my part in helping the company that inspired me.

Adam Cahan

A very important management shift at Yahoo got a bit lost in last week’s news of CEO Marissa Mayer’s first acquisition, a small mobile start-up called Stamped.

That would be the appointment of former IntoNow founder and CEO Adam Cahan to oversee all of Yahoo’s mobile efforts, as well as its Flickr photo sharing service.

According to an internal memo that Mayer sent out last week to employees, Cahan has been given the title of SVP of Emerging Products and Technology, with a spot on the exec staff, reporting directly to her.

Said the memo (in its entirety below):

“[Cahan] will oversee our mobile efforts, enabled screens (CTV+IntoNow), and Flickr. Adam will be responsible for building a world-class team focused on creating innovative products and experiences that inspire and delight our users worldwide.”

Mayer’s promotion of the slick exec, who has been described by almost everyone I spoke to at Yahoo as smoothly political, is an interesting internal choice by Mayer. He only got to Yahoo recently, after IntoNow was bought by Yahoo for more than $20 million in the spring of last year.

IntoNow was a spinoff from the video advertising company Auditude, which was sold to Adobe for a reported $100 million.

The television indexing start-up had launched in early 2011 as an Apple iPhone app that recognized what was playing on the screen by analyzing the audio from satellite feeds and matching it to listings. The start-up had hoped to eventually license its technology as offer-measurement services for TV advertising and viewership.

As Liz Gannes noted in a post on AllThingsD:

“It’s similar to the Shazam mobile app that many people know and love, which IDs an ambient song by recording it and quickly matching it to an archive. IntoNow users can “check in” to a particular episode once it’s been recognized, like one would check into a restaurant on Foursquare. The goal is to enable conversations around the watercooler and on social networks by helping users connect around what they’re watching and discover new things to watch.”

Cool, although IntoNow’s technology was far more compelling than its consumer promise.

Now, Cahan will be charged with doing both of Yahoo in mobile — which is most likely to be accomplished via a series of small mobile acquisitions, presumably to be stitched together into a cohesive and successful whole.

At least that’s the idea.

Cahan is an experienced exec, having worked at a number of places before founding IntoNow, including MTV Networks, NBC, McKinsey, National Geographic Television and — wait for it — Google, in business operations.

(Being an ex-Googler, which Mayer is, seems to have its advantages at Yahoo these days, with Cahan as the latest example.)

He is most definitely a key hire, because Mayer spent a lot of time stressing how mobile was Yahoo’s No. 1 priority on its recent earnings call with investors.

“Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company,” she said, noting a “focused, coherent” mobile strategy was the top initiative.

Mayer had to say that, of course, even if being a mobile giant is now mostly just wishful thinking at Yahoo, since most of the many efforts the company has made in the arena have been duds. Yahoo has also lost a lot of mobile engineering talent over the years, remaining largely a desktop offering, even as the area has increasingly become where consumers are getting their information.

A blog post by Cahan at Yahoo was widely quoted when the tiny Stamped — which is an online recommendations app — was bought for under $10 million last week by Yahoo.

In it, he noted:

“Most people are always within arm’s reach of their mobile phones. For many of us, it’s the first thing we look at in the morning and the last thing we check at night. Mobile is at the center of how we connect with people, consume information, and pass the time, and we’re focused on making Yahoo! the most inspiring and entertaining way to do just that.”

We’ll see if Yahoo can be a significant mobile player, as Mayer has promised Wall Street. But Cahan has certainly been busy since he got the job, sources said, beginning with the rejiggering of Yahoo’s mobile teams, as well as visiting the Flickr office this week.

Until it all sorts itself out, please enjoy this Oct. 25 internal memo on Cahan and the Stamped acquisition:

YAHOO! PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION — DO NOT FORWARD

Hi All –

As we discussed in our strategy all-hands earlier this month, innovation and talent are essential to delivering against our vision to inspire and delight our users as a part of their daily lives. Many of the areas that require special attention are emerging technologies and Yahoo! products where we’ve not yet reinvented, re-imagined and rebuilt in order to keep pace with changes in user behaviors and platform shifts.

To aid our efforts, I’m promoting Adam Cahan to lead this effort as Senior Vice President of Emerging Products and Technology. Adam will be a member of e-staff and report directly to me. He will oversee our mobile efforts, enabled screens (CTV+IntoNow), and Flickr. Adam will be responsible for building a world-class team focused on creating innovative products and experiences that inspire and delight our users worldwide.

And he’s already making great progress! Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve acquired a very talented mobile team, based in New York City.

Robby, Kevin, Bart, Paul and the entire team at Stamped are a natural fit for Yahoo!. Their experience building fun, useful, personalized mobile products aligns well with our vision to create the best everyday mobile experience for our users. The team will be a great asset for us as we expand Yahoo!’s mobile efforts and create another key center for mobile innovation in New York.

I’m excited that we’ve been able to move quickly and execute well in order to bring on such a talented team. Please join me in congratulating Adam in his promotion and welcoming Anthony, Bart, Geoff, Kevin, Landon, Michael, Paul, Robby and Travis to Yahoo!

Thanks,

Marissa

Yahoo turned in a meh third quarter, which came as no surprise to anyone. But none of it matters, since all eyes were on what new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer would say on the investor call today.

Here we go! It is Mayer’s first outing as a public company CEO. She’s been an exec at Google her whole career and, while she has been a prominent public figure in Silicon Valley, she has never run the whole show herself.

Until today, that is!

2:01 pm: Finally, we are hearing from Mayer, who arrived from Google in July.

She is “thrilled to be at Yahoo” and the first 100 days at the company have been a lot of fun.

She’s apparently been a fan since her undergraduate days at Stanford University.

Finally, she tries to answer the big question: “Why did I in particular come to Yahoo?”

Why, indeed, given she and others at Google have spent those years since college putting Yahoo directly into the ground. (Did you know Yahoo gave Google its first big search break, a deal engineered by Mayer and others?)

But, says Mayer, Yahoo is “tailor-made for me,” ticking off arenas such as “search, mail, advertising, home page.”

It’s what she built her career on, apparently — yes, in kicking Yahoo’s behind — but now she wants to help the troubled Silicon Valley Internet giant “grow and help redefine” itself.

Still, she stresses, trying to buy as much time as possible from investors: “It will take multiple years to get to where I want the company to be.”

2:08 pm: Mayer, of course, touts her Apple iPhone-and-free-food spending to make the life of Yahoos better (and on parity with the rest of the digital sector).

To be fair, given the past two CEOs, anyone who did not come in and kick the employees where it counts was going to get some claps.

Mayer’s goals are “simple,” she says, “to execute fast, attract the best talent and make Yahoo the best place to work.”

She says she has assembled a stellar world class exec team to accomplish that.

2:11 pm: Now we get to meet one of that team and a Yahoo newbie — CFO Ken Goldman (pictured here). It’s his first day.

He repeats the results that Yahoo has already put in its press release, which is why I usually zone out here and focus on superficial stuff.

Like how much he sounds like former and ousted Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson. Eek!

Goldman touts Yahoo’s recent Alibaba Group deal in China (done not by Goldman, but by outgoing — jacked by Mayer, really — CFO Tim Morse) and notes a $765 million credit facility that Yahoo apparently got this month.

That’s more dough to add to Mayer’s ever-growing pile to spend on fixing Yahoo.

2:23 pm: Mayer is back — Goldman is nice enough, but everyone wants to hear from the former Google wunderkind.

She makes an obvious statement: Yahoo has to “grow at the same pace as the market we are in.” Yep. Yahoo’s growth has been practically non-existent, while the industry has seen robust increases for years.

Mayer is now hitting all the high points on what needs to be fixed.

Search, communications, a desperate need to invest in mobile. “Our top priority is a focused, coherent” mobile strategy, she says. It’s everybody and their mother’s top priority in the Internet space, but it’s gotta be said.

So Mayer says it again: “Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company.”

She also name-checks “delighting users,” improving advertising and personalization.

2:27 pm: She also underscores that Yahoo will now hold onto its ad tech business.

“No one wants Yahoo to grow more than the people who work here,” says Mayer, who says she is going back to Yahoo’s roots. “We believe Yahoo’s best days lie ahead … and we intend to win.”

It sounds very good, but Mayer has been relatively unspecific overall.

Now to Q&A to see if she will drill down more.

2:30 pm: The first question is about Mayer’s vision as compared to others.

Apparently, it does not mean a “pivot” into different and new businesses. It does mean improving what Yahoo has done well.

“I don’t think this is a situation where there’s a giant pivot and we go into a completely different business,” Mayer says flatly. In other words, no string of Yahoo diners in the offing.

In addition, Mayer says that Yahoo occupies a unique spot that does not put it into “channel conflict” with other rivals and, presumably, can be a better partners.

Also asked about search versus display, she’ll take both, but found display “more compelling.”

The next question is about international markets and the local ones.

Growth, says Mayer, although Yahoo will be narrowing the offerings to be more compelling.

She refers to the recent closing of Yahoo operations in Korea. “We had a very hard time finding a growth story moving forward,” says Mayer.

As to local, which Mayer worked on at Google right before she left, Yahoo’s efforts are merely “good” and it’s not slated for investment going forward.

The next question is about metrics to judge progress. Yahoo left out user numbers it has usually provided in the past and Mayer is not giving up any data now either.

Instead, she is going to rely on internal data and not use third-party data any longer. (It makes some sense since the numbers have been not so pretty over time.)

2:37 pm: Mayer did not want to go into acquisition strategy, which came in a question about its giant pile of dough.

No billion-dollar buys for her, she claims, so cancel that Tesla order for Foursquare, Dennis Crowley!

Mayer noted that most acquisitions will be smaller scale and under $100 million. She noted she had done about 20 of those in her career at Google.

A question about Microsoft.

While there has been “disappointment,” Mayer says the goal is to work with the software giant. In other words, she’s not calling her old pals at Google quite yet (she hasn’t yet, in fact).

The next question is about mobile, with Mayer noting once again that the company has to be primarily mobile-focused going forward.

She’s going to hire as many mobile peeps as possible, especially via smaller-scale acquisitions.

2:44 pm: Goldman gets a little awkward in noting that his young-adult kids think Yahoo is all happening. Hmm, I suppose since he comes from the deservedly defunct Excite@Home and the successful but security-dull Fortinet, that makes sense.

In fact, getting back the young folks is one of Mayer’s top challenges.

A very good question — these are all good ones on the call — is how Yahoo can compete without a mobile operating system, such as Google Android and Amazon Kindle and Apple iOS.

Mayer notes that Yahoo has compelling content that others do not.

Another question on search and, specifically, on mobile search.

Mayer is unspecific, except to note that Yahoo has the ability to be pertinent and competitive.

She is a little more clear on the issues with the Microsoft Bing search relationship. Mayer does know this stuff well, and it is clear there is some serious low-hanging fruit to be plucked by someone who knows what they are doing.

Mayer knows search, to be sure, so I am thinking she will make some bank here.

A question about “overmonetizing” the Yahoo site — i.e. cluttering it up with icky ad units that drive consumers nuts.

Mayer notes that cutbacks in ads to improve user experience will only be done to increase traffic, which is a dicey proposition as it can also kill revenue.

A question about content and where that us going.

Mayer touts the Olympics programming — hat tip to former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn — as something unique to Yahoo. Interestingly, the media folks at Yahoo are still wary of pro-engineering Mayer.

2:55 pm: Another question about her interest in content and investment focus in ad tech.

“I am very product focused,” says Mayer, who uses the term “low latency,” a term that no media person ever would use as a hallmark of success.

She is much more comfy talking tech and that’s an area she knows better. Still, she says little about possible investments.

Mayer is then asked about goals for growth at Yahoo. She does not just want to grow at industry rate, but beyond that! But she’ll take industry rate for now (actually, that would be a huge accomplishment).

Goldman says little on the stock buyback, using the Alibaba dough, except they are buying.

3:01 pm: There are a lot of questions today for Mayer — which is no surprise — but now they are beginning to repeat.

(Plus, I have LOLcat’s Ben Huh waiting for me in the ATD Global HQ lobby — and you all know how I feel about them cats!)

Ah, the last question: It’s about data and personalization and what’s been lacking at Yahoo in not taking advantage about the pile of data it has about .

Yes, that should happen and it will under the regime of Marissa Mayer.

Mayer ends by noting, “It’s time for Yahoo to execute and bring our results back to growth.”

So it is written, so it shall be done.

Later today, new Yahoo CEO and latest savior Marissa Mayer is expected to debut in her first major turn as a public company CEO, as the company reports its third-quarter earnings.

Unfortunately, her initial script recounting the last three months is likely to be rather lackluster, with Wall Street anticipating yet another nothing-to-write-home-about financial performance from the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Investors are expecting $1.08 billion in revenue and 25 cents in net income per share in a report that is likely to show more of the same kind of weakness Yahoo has had for far too long. The main reasons this time: Worrisome growth in search and display advertising, especially compared to robust worldwide trends.

Such concerns have kept Yahoo’s stock pretty much flatlined at about $16 a share since she arrived in July.

And that is not likely to change until Wall Street hears more specifics about Mayer’s future plans. Yahoo has previously said she would outline more about her direction on the call with investors later today, after the financial results are released.

Thus, it’s basically a wait-and-see attitude, until Mayer does that, and perhaps until after there is some actual traction.

As noted by Cantor Fitzgerald’s Youssef Squali:

“1) We’ve seen this movie before (this new CEO is the fifth in as many years) and 2) it will take some time before any of the yet-to-be-announced changes yield any meaningful P&L results. Until then, we see Yahoo! shares remain cheap with limited downside, but no clear catalyst to drive them higher short/medium-term.”

Among the highlights that investors hope will be covered by Mayer and also by new CFO Ken Goldman:

A cogent strategy to turbocharge the business, which — as ATD has reported many times — will focus on tech and product solutions; what acquisition arenas are in the pipeline; plans for new talent recruitment and perhaps layoffs of less-than-stellar employees at the bottom 20 percent of Yahoo; the status of talks to sell off its stake in Yahoo Japan; and, perhaps most of all, what are the plans to return cash to shareholders from its recent sale of its partial stake in China’s Alibaba Group.

That might already be in the works via stock buybacks that Yahoo has been engaged in, but it will be interesting to see if Mayer will provide more specifics.

Investors will also look for some details around mobile growth, and perhaps an update of how Yahoo is fixing its search monetization problems with its partner, Microsoft.

One development that some expect is that Mayer will drop future expectations, in a classic take-out-the-trash move.

As J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth noted:

“Similar to what AOL CEO Tim Armstrong did when he stepped in a few years ago, we believe Mayer is likely to remove low quality ad units and over-monetization throughout the site. Despite the near-term monetization impact, we think this would be a good thing, as it would improve the user experience and de-clutter the site. Additionally, we think it’s likely new management would simply want to start off with a low bar.”

And, if she makes it low enough, anything Mayer will do going forward is likely to look pretty good.

Yahoo said today in a regulatory filing that it had hired one of Google’s top sales execs, Henrique De Castro, as its COO.

Earlier today, I had reported that CEO Marissa Mayer had been close to nabbing the advertising exec, who has most recently been Google’s president of partners business solutions.

De Castro is getting a pile of money for taking the job, including a $600,000 yearly base salary and an annual bonus that could double that figure. In addition, the Silicon Valley Internet giant will give him $36 million in stock grants, including a one-time retention equity award of $18 million and $18 million in the form of performance-based stock options.

He is also getting $1 million in “make-whole” cash for forgoing compensation from Google and $20 million in stock to replace his shares at the search giant that will vest over four years.

That is a very big check, although Mayer garnered an even bigger one when she joined the company in July.

Yahoo’s regulatory statement on the De Castro hiring is embedded below in its entirety, so you can read about his new riches for yourself (unless Yahoo’s persnickety legal head tries to block it).

Said a Google spokesperson about the departure: “We’re grateful to Henrique for all of his contributions at Google and wish him all the best in his new role at Yahoo!”

Both Mayer and also former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson have made previous overtures to nab De Castro, who has held a number of high-level jobs for Google across the globe, including at DoubleClick, in display ads and with major partners.

While he had previously rebuffed those efforts, this time De Castro bit.

There were signs he might this past week, after De Castro canceled a major offsite for his employees, and several attendees who know him well said he was not present at the company’s first night of its annual Zeitgeist event for advertising and publishing clients. The suave De Castro is usually a more noticeable fixture at such gatherings.

This is Mayer’s first big hire at Yahoo, having added only lower-level or less well-known execs to her stable of talent since she was appointed.

She touted the hire in a tweet, although the news was long out the door, while also noting on Twitter it was her first full day at the office since having her first baby two weeks ago.

My first full day back in the office, and I’m excited to kick it off by announcing my new COO, Henrique de Castro: businesswire.com/news/home/2012…

— marissamayer (@marissamayer) October 15, 2012

The hiring does create a potential issue in the sales arena, especially with current head of revenue Michael Barrett. De Castro and Barrett worked together at Google and multiple sources said the pair did not get along there.

It might not matter. While Barrett has publicly said he planned to stay at Yahoo under Mayer — he was hired by interim CEO Ross Levinson this summer before she arrived — many sources said he does not want to be at the company for the long term.

De Castro has a lot of work to do for the big payout he is getting and it will be a big challenge for him to turn around the troubled organization.

Along with declining growth, search market share, engagement and more, Yahoo also has had a management turnover issue of epic proportions.

De Castro will presumably be in charge of making it all better at Yahoo when he arrives sometime before the beginning of the year and is likely to focus on operations while Mayer zeroes in on products.

One area of trouble: While she has lavished attention on cultural issues and on the company’s tech troops, sources said most of the advertising and media leadership at Yahoo have had little interaction with Mayer since she arrived this summer.

Advertising, of course, is Yahoo’s biggest money maker.

The Portugal-born De Castro has a lot of experience here and is decidedly more of a charmer than Mayer.

More importantly, he is a very high-profile hire, as well as a colorful one. He speaks a menu of languages, dresses with a lot of style and is a worldwide traveler. I know him a little bit and find him to be smooth and confident, even if a little cagey.

Before Google, De Castro worked at Dell and also McKinsey.

All this makes him a perfect choice for Mayer, who is also a former Googler, since she has been considering purchasing a range of companies in the advertising tech space. The most likely candidate of late is PubMatic, which has been in early talks with Yahoo about being acquired.

The Silicon Valley start-up would be a solid add to Yahoo’s ad platform offerings, especially if it wants to stay competitive with Google. PubMatic helps publishers effectively manage their display ad inventory, and competes with Google’s AdMeld.

(Ironically, Barrett ran that start-up, which he sold to Google for $400 million about a year ago.)

Here is the De Castro hiring document from Yahoo:

YHOO-20121015-8K-20121015

And here is the official press release from Yahoo:

Henrique de Castro Named Chief Operating Officer of Yahoo!

October 15, 2012

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) announced today that Henrique de Castro has been hired as chief operating officer (COO). Reporting directly to Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, de Castro will be responsible for strategic and operational management of Yahoo!’s sales, operations, media and business development worldwide.

“Henrique is an incredibly accomplished and rigorous business leader, and I’m personally excited to have him join Yahoo!’s strong leadership team,” said Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!. “His operational experience in Internet advertising and his proven success in structuring and scaling global organizations make him the perfect fit for Yahoo! as we propel the business to its next phase of growth.”

“The combination of Yahoo!’s unique properties with high quality content, its renewed focus on outstanding user experience and its massive reach bring tremendous value to users, advertisers and partners,” said de Castro. “This is a pivotal point in Yahoo!’s history, and I believe strongly in the opportunity ahead. I can’t wait to join Marissa and the team and get started.”

De Castro brings more than 20 years experience leading operations, strategy, partner management and revenue generation for some of the world’s leading brands. Most recently, he was vice president of Google’s worldwide Partner Business Solutions group, where he was responsible for advertising platforms and services for Google’s publisher and commerce partners. Prior to that, he led Google’s media, mobile and platforms organization, where he helped to grow the business significantly. Prior to Google, de Castro spent two years at Dell Corporation, where he managed sales and business development operations across Western Europe. He has consulted for McKinsey & Company, where he advised numerous clients across many different industries. His career also includes senior positions in private equity and advertising businesses.

De Castro will join the company on or before January 22, 2013, or as soon as he has satisfied his obligations to his current employer.

New York magazine just published what will doubtlessly be the first of many larger-scale profile pieces on new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (Fortune’s at work on one, too).

Titled “Can Marissa Mayer Really Have It All?” New York’s version is a very solid and fair effort that raises a lot of pertinent questions about the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s latest leader.

That, of course, includes pondering the high-profile issues around her coping with a newborn (really new) and work; her carefully crafted public glamour-geek-girl persona that is at odds with her sometimes more tetchy private one; Mayer’s mostly-up-and-then-down-at-the-end career at Google as a key exec; and the myriad challenges she faces in turning around the long-troubled Yahoo.

Writes Lisa Miller quite astutely: “This newest version of Marissa, the mom-geek-CEO, will surely test Mayer’s iterative powers, for she’s playing to a tougher crowd, one that won’t be placated by tweets, Manolos, and rapturous praise for pineapple malts.”

Indeed not, which is why sources said Mayer is likely to begin to make postpartum appearances back at Yahoo as early as this week. She delivered her first child with husband Zach Bogue, whom she dubbed “Big Baby Boy Bogue,” on Sept. 30.

Among the initiatives she has been working on up to and after her son’s birth, said numerous sources, is the redo of Yahoo’s powerful home page, a reorganization of top management duties, and an announcement about whether it will buy back shares or give a dividend from its recent multibillion-dollar sale of part of its lucrative stake in China’s Alibaba Group.

In addition, said sources, Mayer is also putting into place her new methodology of keeping track of employee performance and rewards. There is an all-hands meeting scheduled today, in fact, apparently to go over the system, which Mayer spoke about in her last all-hands meeting.

The home page redo is also in the late-stage works for unveiling soon, said sources. Those who have seen it said it has a starker and simpler design ethos, and will stress user personalization, customization and more social elements. It will also have ample opportunity for third-party developers to offer a variety of services on it (maybe Mayer can save Zynga by copying a little bit from Facebook!).

The reorg will also be interesting. Mayer has made a number of top exec appointments, including adding a new CFO and head of HR. She will also be rejiggering other roles of existing management.

For example, expect tech and operations EVP David Dibble — who got a mess of new responsibilities right before Mayer was appointed — to have some of that dialed back.

The disposition of all $3.6 billion of Alibaba cash is perhaps the most immediate issue, especially for investors, who are largely hoping for a buyback of stock. Such a move will likely cause Yahoo shares to rise, as happened at AOL.

That would be nice, since Yahoo stock has stayed pretty flat since Mayer got to the company in July. (That compares, ironically, to a 31 percent rise at Google since she left.)

But Wall Street analysts and others have been making bullish calls on Yahoo recently, including CNBC’s screamy stock guru Jim Cramer of “Mad Money.”

Boosted by the growing value of its Asian assets — in China, as well as in Japan, which Yahoo is trying to sell — and also anticipating some kind of magic mojo from Mayer, price targets for Yahoo shares have been as high as $22.

That was from Goldman Sachs, which reinstated coverage of Yahoo with a “buy” rating recently. Analyst Heath Terry noted that “while user engagement continues to decline, the company lacks a mobile strategy and significant talent has left the company, Yahoo still has hundreds of millions of users, valuable Web properties, and the financial resources to fuel a potential turn around over time.”

Translated: Yahoo kinda stinks, but it still might be able to buy itself out of this mess with a $10.6 billion pile of dough from Asia.

All eyes will be on the actual business Yahoo operates itself in two weeks on Oct. 22, when the company announces third-quarter results. Sources said the quarter will come in as expected, but will still tell a story of lackluster growth in advertising, engagement and, well, every key part of its native offerings.

That said, Mayer is expected to be on the call — her first at Yahoo — to outline her grand vision in more detail, as a spokeswoman has noted.

That’s good, since shiny profiles of her can only do so much. It’ll be nice to finally hear her say something definitive in public about how she’s going to fix the company that has given the mediagenic exec even more press.

(And, let’s hope, without the tweets, Manolos and pineapple malts.)

It’s the latest of several options that have been floated, including whether Facebook or others might try to swoop in to buy the company.

Most of these scenarios are moot, given Zynga’s founder and CEO Mark Pincus controls the troubled company, owning more than half of its shares. It is not clear if he would be willing to give up now.

That said, he has do something — the company’s stock hit a new low on Friday, tumbling 12 percent to $2.48 a share. At that price, investors are valuing the business at very little, since Zynga has the equivalent of $2.10 a share in hard assets.

That price could get lower, with Wall Street investors and many others becoming even more relentless in their criticism of Zynga.

There have been many concerns already that began after its once close partner, Facebook, changed the way it operates, with the result that its platform did not perform as well as it once did for Zynga, especially for its once popular Ville-style games.

It’s been made worse as consumers continue their shift to mobile, which Zynga says does not always monetize as well as Facebook.

To add to the pile, Zynga has suffered mass exodus of talent, some for better and some not. Over the past few months, it has lost several high-ranking managers, including its COO John Schappert and Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Karp, who were both brought on board for their experience in gaming. Last week came the departure of Paul and David Bettner, the creators of Zynga’s enormously successful Words With Friends franchise.

There was plenty of other fodder for criticism this past week, after the company also wrote down the acquisition of OMGPOP by as much as $95 million, or about half of the total price.

In a memo issued to employees on Friday, Pincus wrote that he was disappointed and is focused on rectifying the situation.

In the near term, he said it might mean considering “targeted” cost reductions. And in the longer term, he noted that Zynga would have to invest more in mobile and a platform approach that enables it to publish third-party game titles.

Whether he can do that easily with intense shareholder scrutiny is questionable, and ditching the public markets would have its advantages.

To get a sense of where Zynga stands, and whether going private is feasible, I talked to a handful of analysts and experts, all whom had mixed opinions.

Michael Pachter, Wedbush Securities:

At this price, yes, Zynga can go private, but I don’t think that will happen. That would trigger more unrest by shareholders, who would say you sold shares at $10 and now you want to buy them back at $3? It would have the appearance of some sort of scheme.

If he [Pincus] wants to send a signal to investors that they are done making acquisitions — since they obviously didn’t do a very good job at it — they should take some of its war chest and buy back stock. He should also personally buy stock. We need to see that kind of commitment.

Peter Relan, executive chairman of CrowdStar, which pivoted from social to mobile gaming this year:

I have three solutions: Mobile, mobile, mobile. Mobile gaming this year globally is a $2 billion to $3 billion business and is expected to hit $18 billion by 2016. I don’t think there’s a lack of growth in gaming; it’s more product strategy.

Mark is a competitive guy and he’s going to fight like hell to transform the company and take it to the next level.

Arvind Bhatia, analyst, Sterne Agee:

They need to restructure the business significantly and do it very quickly, too. We think that they are considerably overstaffed for the level of revenue that they’ll be generating in the coming years.

They need to right-size and preserve the cash. Going private won’t solve the problem … the question is, where will the cash be in a year from now?

Rich Greenfield, analyst, BTIG:

They will generate zero EBITDA in the back half of 2012 based on their new guidance and earnings in 2013 and beyond are totally unclear — the company’s assets are literally walking out the door — you see the Words With Friends team left.

Why would they want to lever up and go private — sounds petrifying … Zynga clearly has no idea how to model/project their business/earnings, in turn, going private would appear to be a very dangerous move, don’t you think?

They need to make great games that have staying power.

New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer took to the stage today at the Silicon Valley Internet company’s URL’s Café on its Sunnyvale, Calif., HQ campus to outline — in very broad strokes — her plans for the future.

Very broad, as it turned out, and full of corporate bromides that many in attendance said were very well delivered by the former Google exec.

What she did not show, although Mayer had promised “an act of radical transparency”: Highly specific plans for overhauling search and email, as well as an in-process and dramatic home page redesign. She also said little about what she is going to do with Yahoo’s recent cash haul from its sale of part of its stake in China’s Alibaba.

Instead, it was big picture all the way, with a lot of small details. (It also bears a strong resemblance to plans once pushed by former product chief Blake Irving.)

First and perhaps most importantly, Mayer tried to answer that age-old question of what Yahoo was/is/will be.

Apparently, to Mayer, Yahoo is a company that excels at personalization in its various arenas, from email to content to advertising.

Her goals: To grow users and usage, as well as advertisers and talent, using personalization.

How Mayer was going to do this was a lot more squishy, but her strategy bullets included:

• Yahoo becoming a part of users’ everyday routines.
• A focus on core competencies (whatever that is!).
• Being friendly to partners across a range of companies from mobile carriers to social networks to hardware makers.
• A focus on shifting Yahoo’s platform to mobile.
• An emphasis on thinking big and at scale, which Mayer called the “Rule of 100 Million.” It presumably means attract that much of an audience to various products going forward.
• And, of course, a new push to move faster and take ownership for your work.

Mayer spent a good amount of time talking about this, as well as getting away from what one person described as “consensus culture” and taking too much time to get products out the door.

Increasing feedback loops was also important to Mayer.

If it all sounds a little Tony Robbins, it is, especially Mayer’s focus on what she called the “4 C’s” for talent at Yahoo.

They are: Culture, company goals, calibration (I have no idea what that is, frankly) and compensation.

Yahoo, I am sure, liked that part, although to get more of that, Mayer needs to probably paint a much more specific plan for investors to get excited about.

It’s been nice to see all the euphoria at Yahoo about free food and Apple iPhones kicking it up a notch.

But, purple people, guess what? Them’s just your basic table stakes in Silicon Valley these days and pretty much everyone else has had such perks for a long while now.

Thus, as nice as it is to drink your coconut water gratis, after two months in charge, it’s long past time to focus on what new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is up to besides making much-needed but obvious cultural changes at the troubled Internet giant.

She’s been busy with the expected listening tour of employees and also outside tech players — such as former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel — which is a textbook stop in the turnaround playbook.

Now comes the hard part: Actually beginning to make the significant decisions about how she’s going to turn around Yahoo and what the key issues of strategic focus need to be.

In a series of recent meetings, according to numerous sources inside the company, Mayer has begun to outline what those are to top staff.

Not surprisingly, they are many of the same thorny issues that Yahoo has been facing for a long time and which center primarily on making the company relevant again in a wide number of ways.

I’ll get to many of them over the next week in a series of What Will Marissa Do? posts — including looking closely at her new hires, when and how Mayer will deal with inevitable layoff decisions facing the company, where the sale of Yahoo! Japan stands and, finally, what she’s cooking up for key Yahoo products.

But the focus has to fall first of all on search and advertising, the two arenas that Mayer has been studying most closely, according to numerous sources close to the situation.

That has included a recent meeting and numerous discussions with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer about improving Yahoo’s search advertising partnership, said sources at both companies.

That deal has been largely disappointing since it was struck under the regime of ousted CEO Carol Bartz several years ago.

Many reasons are given for the poor performance of the entire arrangement, including lack of improvement of cost per click and share growth for both parties. That means bid density and numbers of advertisers remain too low, especially compared to Google’s offering of access to a larger, more active and lucrative market.

Simply put, despite massive spending by Microsoft on search, users and advertisers get significantly better results overall with the search leader Google.

(You can read a great piece by Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan from last year, which exhaustively looked at the issues until then.)

The irony abounds that it’s up to Mayer to fix this problem of improving revenue per search with Ballmer, since she has been among the executives who have made Google the search behemoth it has become.

Her particular expertise has been on search experience for consumers, which is just the area that Yahoo desperately needs to improve after handing over technology duties to Microsoft.

That move was controversial at the time and some feel it was a big mistake. But, most also think there is no going back at this point, given the enormous cost of running a serious search enterprise.

Such an idea is still being raised inside Yahoo, although it seems more nostalgic than a realistic possibility, given the enormous price and, more importantly, the departure of the company’s core search engineers in recent years.

That doesn’t mean Yahoo under Mayer can’t be key to helping solve Microsoft’s search tech problems. She certainly knows the entire arena, which has already given Yahoo increased credibility among Microsoft’s search engineers.

“None of Yahoo’s many CEOs knew anything about search technology and that’s certainly not the case here with Mayer,” said one person close to the situation at Microsoft. “When she walks in, she instantly has status among the geeks as someone who knows what she’s talking about.”

It still may be a losing battle, due to Google’s overwhelming dominance, but if anyone at Yahoo can spot areas of even small improvement — which can yield big returns — it could be Mayer.

In addition, she can spearhead Yahoo’s own efforts to reverse — or perhaps simply stop — search market share declines via delivering a better consumer offering.

That’s still heavy lifting, no matter the exec, since both Microsoft’s Bing and Google are better equipped to win here, too.

“It hard to imagine we are going to slow down in any way,” said one former colleague of Mayer’s at Google to me recently in a rather ominous tone. “We’re only going to get more competitive.”

Pressure much?

And more: Mayer is under a time limit, since guaranteed payments Microsoft agreed to pay Yahoo for the shortfalls on what was promised will be running out next year. The pair has renegotiated that deal before, and it will likely have to do so again.

Of course, Mayer could try to walk and threaten to take Yahoo’s search business elsewhere, a move that former CEO Scott Thompson was mulling before his ouster.

That’s not a surprising ploy, except it is probably impossible to pull off, a fact acknowledged by top Yahoo execs.

“It might feel good to say we have options in search,” said one person close to the situation. “But that ship sailed years ago.”

Indeed, especially since Google is the only choice of possible alternate partners and such a move is rife with major obstacles.

There is the issue of the contract with Microsoft, which could lead to a potentially explosive legal struggle Yahoo can ill afford.

“They can try to get out of the deal,” said one high-ranking person at the software giant. “But that’s a lot easier threatened than done.”

And, there is the clear regulatory hairball any search hook-up between Google and Yahoo would lead to.

That’s happened before, which Mayer knows well since she was a top exec in Google’s business when it tried to partner with Yahoo as a way to prevent Microsoft’s hostile takeover bid for the company.

While times might have changed, Google is currently facing a likely battle with the Federal Trade Commission over its powerful search business, and trying to get Yahoo’s business now is a non-starter.

Thus, finally fixing the Microsoft partnership is key to Mayer’s success since it represents a little over one-third of revenue of Yahoo (see the chart below).

The bigger part of Yahoo’s business, as you can also see from the chart, has been display revenues. And that, too, has been a sorry tale of declines and ever more disappointing results.

A report by eMarketer on display market share had this depressing chart for Yahoo:

As is clear, the march downward for one-time leader Yahoo has been swift, and the prospects for the future are worse as Google and Facebook vie for leadership.

The reasons for this have been myriad, but Mayer has apparently decided that it’s been due in large part to the broken Yahoo ad tech platforms and their ever weaker performance.

As we have previously reported, she has determined that it’s now time to invest in improving them, both by funding internally and external acquisitions.

For that, she has formed a tight group of execs to scan the landscape for tasty and innovative treats for Yahoo to gobble up.

That includes: Scott Burke, SVP of Yahoo’s advertising and data platforms; Brian Silver, who runs the company’s Right Media Exchange; Xuhui Shao, a key engineering VP under Burke; and Mark Morrissey, the longtime tech exec who previously ran the company’s search business and was key to integrating the Microsoft search deal into place.

The cerebral Burke especially has been pushing ad platform improvement for a while and finally seems to have won the battle against detractors of the big and possibly grandiose plan by appealing to Mayer’s interest in not giving up.

Thus, the tabling of plans by Thompson, as well as interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, to outsource some of the automated parts of the display business to Google.

Those talks were very serious, as well as others to sell off Right Media, but they are done for now.

One major issue — the people in charge of the ad platform turnaround could also be seen (and most definitely are) as mired in Yahoo’s legacy of lackluster results and poor performance.

“It is kind of funny that the guys responsible for the decline now have the responsibility for fixing it,” said one source at Yahoo.

It’s a fair point to be made.

But that’s water under the bridge, apparently, since the group has been making the rounds, helped by Yahoo’s M&A execs, with a wide range of companies in many different ad tech area being considered (and some dismissed), including: Mediaocean, Turn, Criteo, PubMatic and Millennial Media.

Millennial is the most interesting, because it is a mobile ad play, where Yahoo is exactly nowhere (to be fair, less than nowhere) after years of botched efforts.

As with other companies, this is a critical arena for Yahoo, and yet one more that Mayer needs to focus on.

Lastly, Mayer has to make sure Yahoo’s premium display business remains strong. This is much more based on relationships with large advertisers than on major sponsorship and branding offerings, as well as creating consumer products and content that is appealing to marketers.

This area is now headed up by former Google exec Michael Barrett, who has publicly said he was staying put for now at Yahoo as its chief of revenue.

In fact, because he is in charge of all sales, he occupies the second slot under Mayer on Yahoo’s now strangely configured, punctuation-impaired and information-free management page.

But numerous sources inside and outside Yahoo said Barrett has also told many people that he is still not fully committed to staying in the role for the long haul.

If he eventually gets a lucrative exit package — something the new boss is not being very generous with overall, said sources — that will mean Mayer will need a high-profile and well-regarded ad exec to replace him; sources said Mayer has already begun reaching out to some candidates.

The pickings are slim, with only a few names on the list of those capable of taking on such a job. That includes: Demand Media’s Joanne Bradford, who was also a former top Yahoo exec; Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi; OWN’s Kathleen Kayse; MLB.com’s Bob Bowman; and any number of Google execs.

In that regard, as with all the other search and advertising overhaul efforts at Yahoo, it is a matter of attracting serious talent into the company going forward.

More on that — and more — to come.

According to several sources, Yahoo is now on the hunt for a COO — with special emphasis on someone with turnaround experience — presumably to be a worker-bee No. 2 to product-guru CEO Marissa Mayer.

Several Silicon Valley execs and others outside of tech have been contacted by Spencer Stuart, the executive talent firm that is working on a number of other exec searches for Yahoo.

It is not clear if Mayer is on board this plan for a COO and other sources said she has different ideas for the management organization at Yahoo, including an elaborate general manager system that is similar to that at Google. Mayer, who come to Yahoo from the search giant, has put a lot of practices from her former employer in place, from free food to weekly all-hands meetings to more stringent hiring.

In any case, those candidates contacted recently have been told that the company is looking for a top exec with a focus on restructuring and also finance. Presumably, in this scenario, Mayer will focus on product and innovation — her strengths — while the COO would perhaps be responsible for making the trains run on time on the business side of Yahoo. A plethora of employees who have met with her have stressed her intense interest in products, which is mirrored by much less attention to more mundane business issues.

Perhaps the highest profile COO hire of a similar sort has been Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, who was brought in at a dicey time for the social networking site to work on the business while co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg focused on its product.

Such an exec could be a good idea, since — despite the wide latitude Mayer has been given to make changes — Yahoo can not afford much damage to its current operations as Wall Street investors wait for her strategy to reinvigorate the company.

In fact, a recent filing in which Yahoo said Mayer was rethinking its promise to return a $4 billion-plus cash windfall from the sales of assets in China to shareholders caused the stock to drop quickly, largely due to a decided lack of information about what she planned to do with the money.

It will be interesting to see who would be intrigued by the mammoth job of helping fix Yahoo, since most think the process will inevitably include major layoffs.

Spencer Stuart’s Jim Citrin worked on the troubled tech giant’s recent CEO search, which ended up in the hiring of the high-profile Google exec. Mayer’s hiring was a public relations coup for Yahoo’s board, especially its large shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point.

Mayer herself has also been reaching out to her extensive circle of colleagues at Google and elsewhere in tech to come help her turn around Yahoo. Most recently, she has been trying to hire a former Googler Katie Jacobs Stanton, who once worked with Mayer and now runs international efforts for Twitter.

At the same time, several top execs have left Yahoo since Mayer arrived as she conducts a house cleaning and puts her own team into place. That has included its former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn and HR head David Windley. More such departures are expected.

Mayer has also kept execs, including making interim general counsel Ron Bell the permanent one last week. She has also relied heavily on Yahoo co-founder David Filo.

But her new hires have mostly been lower-level ones, made up of staff who had been close to her at Google.

I would ask for comment from Yahoo, but one of those Mayer newbies at Yahoo — Anne Espiritu, who appears to be a ghost — is still sitting on a number of my and other reporter’s requests to comment on various issues that have been completely unanswered. I have now decided to move onto the other two — Patricia Moll Kriese and Andrew Schulte — to see if they disappear too.

David Windley

As I reported earlier today, new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is shaking up the human resources unit at the company.

Consider it shook and definitely not stirred: Leaving the company, by mutual agreement, is its longtime head David Windley, several sources said.

Also out is his No. 2 exec, several sources said, talent acquisition head Grant Bassett. Both have been replaced by another Yahoo HR exec Kristen Robinson on interim basis. (In another big HR departure, international head Marc Ketzel just left for a top HR job at Samsung.)

Windley’s tenure has included a huge brain drain at the Silicon Valley Internet giant and a series of layoffs at Yahoo, as well as an ongoing musical-chair series of top leaders.

Yahoo, keeping with a spanking new policy of non-communication, has not returned an email seeking comment.

Windley’s leaving comes as exactly no surprise, since Mayer has arrived and taken control of its culture and recruiting, which have basically boiled down to making a Yahoo version of the search giant. Before taking the top job at Yahoo, Mayer worked at Google for her entire career.

As I wrote earlier: “While free food and better swag have attracted attention, Mayer has also plunged into the recruiting arena aggressively. She is now reviewing all new hires personally — another steal, um, borrow, from Google — and has also begun to require a much more stringent set of standards.

That has included the requirement of the addition of solid college grade-point averages and a preference for higher-level educational institutions for incoming resumes.”

Windley follows former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn out the door as Mayer begins her house-cleaning of the current crop of exec at Yahoo, while searching her her own team.

Mayer is reaching out to a number of execs outside the company, including Twitter exec Katie Stanton, as well as perusing at a series of start-ups to bring new people into the company.

She has made two hires of mid-level execs from Google — both of whom have been described to me as longtime Mayer loyalists. But she has still to pull in a big name or deeply experienced exec to her team.

We’ll be watching for that, of course, as well as who’s next to go in this game of “10 Little Yahoos.” Several sources at the company said that they expect Mayer to replace almost the entire current executive team, from its CFO Tim Morse on down.

David Windley

According to sources close to the situation, active new CEO Marissa Mayer has turned her focus on the troubled Silicon Valley Internet giant’s human resources unit.

It is now headed by David Windley, whose tenure has included a huge brain drain and a series of layoffs at Yahoo, as well as an ongoing series of top leaders.

Yahoo, as has become its new practice, has not returned an email seeking comment.

Some in the company think a big shakeup is coming, which could include Windley’s departure.

He could stay too, but it is clear his new boss will be in his business much more than previous CEOs.

That is probably no surprise in the wake of the hiring of Mayer. The former Google exec has instituted a series of quickfire changes across the company related to its culture and recruiting, which have basically boiled down to making a Yahoo version of the search giant.

While free food and better swag have attracted attention, Mayer has also plunged into the recruiting arena aggressively. She is now reviewing all new hires personally — another steal, um, borrow, from Google — and has also begun to require a much more stringent set of standards.

That has included the requirement of the addition of solid college grade-point averages and a preference for higher-level educational institutions for incoming resumes.

Windley has been at Yahoo through a long series of CEO musical chairs and has been criticized internally for the talent loss and also its series of layoffs at Yahoo.

While none of this is his fault specificially, Windley is the person, according to its Web site, in charge of “driving Yahoo!’s worldwide strategies around talent, culture and organization effectiveness.”

Which has not been very effective — thus, the Mayer scrutiny.

If he left, Windley would follow former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn out the door as Mayer begins her house-cleaning of the company and looks to put her own team in place.

Mayer is reaching out to a number of execs outside the company, including Twitter exec Katie Stanton, as well as perusing at a series of start-ups to bring new people into the company.